tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post1400463313992605955..comments2018-02-17T16:18:46.083-05:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: "this little worm begins to grow in the back of your brain" The Thought Criminalnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-51536074758026844772017-04-21T13:10:05.403-04:002017-04-21T13:10:05.403-04:00Are you familiar with the dozens of pieces I&#39;v...Are you familiar with the dozens of pieces I&#39;ve written about eugenics and its relationship to the mass murders of the 20th century? <br /><br />I&#39;m not responsible for what people don&#39;t know, I&#39;ve certainly written about the other groups slated for extermination by the Nazi, I&#39;ve written about his practice run in murdering the disabled a number of times, my dispute with Steve Simels is based in his dismissal of the oppression of the Romani people, it started in a disgusting joke he made in response to another joke made by one of his witty buddies, in fact about Jews. <br /><br />I think the fact is that humor is dangerous and damaging when it attacks people who are vulnerable, when it dehumanizes them, when it gives permission to other people to hate them or think of them as subhuman. That makes a lot of humor dangerous and harmful. The people least in danger from it are those people with the most power and resources. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-67897003421284776892017-04-21T12:51:25.676-04:002017-04-21T12:51:25.676-04:00I think you’re putting the cart before the horse h...I think you’re putting the cart before the horse here. A culture that is cruel, callous and apathetic is far more likely to find those subjects a reasonable source of humor because they’ve divested them of any depth or insight. What’s the Holocaust to most? Nazis murdered Jews. A lot of them. How many people know about the Third Reich’s attempts to exterminate the Romani people, or the handicapped? How many know that the roots of their program existed long before Hitler became chancellor, or how those roots stretch back to the American legal system?<br /><br />Consider this, if you asked someone, “What’s the difference between a Romani and a pizza?” and then delivered the punchline, how many people do you think would understand what you’re talking about? I’d argue not many, and certainly far fewer than if you told it about Jews, and, I’d further insist that those people wouldn’t find it funny because they likely have studied the Holocaust in far greater depth than your average Joe.<br /><br />Which brings me back to my original point – People who take comedy too seriously as some form of social criticism are likely doing so because they’re more comfortable in the safe, sweet embrace of certainty. There is a joy in ignorance that the enlightened aren’t privy to. Liam Pravardehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02939183220563675989noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-78341081202437434962017-04-19T16:19:00.344-04:002017-04-19T16:19:00.344-04:00You are arguing as to how you would see things, wh...You are arguing as to how you would see things, which is the same problem with the civilized Jewish comedians who were asked in that article to comment on whether or not the Holocaust is a fit topic for comedy. But their audiences don&#39;t just contain informed, sophisticated, people of good will, and even if theirs did, there are other audiences and other levels of good and quite malignant will.<br /><br />When cable TV puts on entertainments about serial killers in gruesome detail and explain how they were caught, I&#39;m certain that along with all of the people who are there for the morbid, sick entertainment, there are those who are aroused by it and find ideas in it for how they might do the same or worse and how they might avoid being caught.<br /><br />I think there is a general effect on the culture, making it crueler, more callous, more inclined to indifference to suffering when nothing is held to be sacred, beyond use as an object of everything up to and including the crudest, cruelest jokes. That the jokes might be funny doesn&#39;t count for much. It might make it worse. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-2168903660222267532017-04-19T14:16:36.676-04:002017-04-19T14:16:36.676-04:00I would argue that a person with racist attitudes,...I would argue that a person with racist attitudes, beliefs and ideas doesn’t need jokes to justify them. That Will Rogers thought it acceptable to make a joke about lynching does not mean he’d have thought it funny if the man he was speaking too were hung by an angry mob. Let me offer a personal example of humor about a distasteful subject: I’m a strong advocate against child abuse. Donate my money and time to that. But, I still laugh when Homer Simpson tries to strangle Bart. I don’t think it normalizes abuse or makes a parent hitting their child acceptable.<br /><br />First off, the caveman joke is old and hacky, and was when my father was a boy. It’s hardly a prominent feature of mainstream comedy today. I’m fairly confident if you Google any of the prominent talk show hosts and “rape jokes” you’ll get fewer hits than Mario Mendoza. Second, we are in a hypersexualized milieu, and I think humor about rape, which is NOT mainstream, at all, is no more to blame for crimes of that nature than jokes about alcoholics are the reason we have so many of those. We live in a hook up culture, and indiscriminate and unbridled sexual encounters (often fueled by drugs, and this includes alcohol) are far more reasonable explanation than the idea that rape is considered a joking matter or that men are encouraged to do so.Liam Pravardehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02939183220563675989noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-92024837927448735472017-04-18T05:40:48.857-04:002017-04-18T05:40:48.857-04:00I think the problem is more complicated than peopl...I think the problem is more complicated than people who take it seriously, it&#39;s that they take the permissions it gives for, for example, expressing racist ideas, attitudes, beliefs and, with that, practices. In one of my pieces last week on this I linked to a piece I did about the fact that as lynching was a reign of terror throughout much of the country, it was entirely acceptable in the media and, so, the general popular culture to make lynching jokes. I noted as mainstream and respected a humorist as Will Rogers did so in one of his movies, there are many other examples. <br /><br />There is a rape culture, an encouragment of the idea that men are entitled to have sex with women who don&#39;t want to have sex with them, that they have a right, or what in the materialistic culture is its replacement, the sociobiological, pop-Darwinist idea that rape is natural as in the cartoon of a caveman clubbing a woman and dragging her back to her cave. That image is played out probably dozens or more times every day in the United States, with or without the club. I researched the unmentioned epidemic of women being murdered on account of their gender about ten years ago and found that the FBI estimated there were about four of those every day. If you don&#39;t think treating such things with humor doesn&#39;t both normalize it and encourage marginally rational people and way too many somewhat rational ones to think and act in those terms I wonder why that would be. <br /><br />I always thought it was rather incredible that the educated, sophisticated people who did All in the Family didn&#39;t seem to notice that as they made fun of Archy Bunker and other blue collar stereotypes that blue collar people weren&#39;t shamed and cowed into acquiescent voting for what were presented as their superior, &quot;liberals&quot;. They knew they were being mocked and they voted for Republicans who would shaft them, blame it on those liberal snobs and flatter those voters who had been so offended. That they were able to tap into a racist mindset that had very temporarily left TV and the movies (it would be back within the decade) which Hollywood had encouraged for generations didn&#39;t hurt their manipulation.<br /><br />Secular liberals have shown one thing, they can use the media to break down sexual restrictions - hardly a great feat - but they&#39;re otherwise entirely stupid about how such things work. A lot of them are hardly liberals, either, playing one, sometimes, but quite willing to make money out of promoting the worst of the right. The number of such &quot;liberals&quot; who have made money for Rupert Murdoch are many. As my stupidest troll noted, Steve Bannon has made money out of Jerry Seinfeld who, racist and sexist as he is, I&#39;ve seen taken as some kind of liberalish figure. I never mistook him for the such. But, then, I never mistook him for a comedian, either. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-43972218002035437972017-04-17T13:02:55.469-04:002017-04-17T13:02:55.469-04:00The trouble arises when comedy, which by nature is...The trouble arises when comedy, which by nature is glib and visceral, is taken seriously as social commentary. A key point about David Irving, though, relates to how he brings up his views being formulated as a child, or, when he was even more self-centered and ignorant than he is now. That his approach to investigation meant ignoring any evidence (and there is plenty) that would contradict his childish fancies is something I would insist has little to do with humor and far far more to do with his immaturity, which is far too broad a term to do justice to the various ways people adhere to youthful fancies and delusions.<br /><br />To those who take comedy too seriously, humor provides us with certainty, and that’s what it has in common with extreme political and social ideologies. Rape is not a socially acceptable subject for humor, but the unbending devotions, and vice versa, to the narrative of “rape culture” has provided us with real victims because people refuse to look at details but try to insert situations into their predefined standards. The prestige offered humor arises from the comfort of sureness, but I don’t think it to be the cause, of that.Liam Pravardehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02939183220563675989noreply@blogger.com